So, the Game Design Concepts course officially finished a little over two weeks ago. I followed along for the first half, but dropped the ball when it came to the month-long design project. Playtesting is time consuming, but essential – and finding a bunch of ‘randoms’ to act as testers for blind playtesting is tricky.

Rather than working on my Game Design Concepts project, I instead decided to focus my game development time in August on getting something ready for the “Android Developer Challenge 2“. While I didn’t actually make that deadline (I decided it was not worth submitting something unpolished), it helped to push my uber-secret-Android-project into the realms of playability, and I should be able to release it before the end of the year.

Here’s a summary of my Game Design Concepts project, as it stands.

The game board “pre-prototype”:

“Commuter Hero” board design. Squares are stations, circles are points enroute between stations. Triangles are the destinations (“goals”). Lines are railroads, “roads” are bus routes, dotted lines are walking routes. The “piechart” thing represents the clock, which turns to the next colour each turn (representing 15 minute timesteps, I guess). It’s been rubbed off the whiteboard now, so this photo serves as a record of the design in case I want to reproduce it and continue.

Each player is given three destination cards, which are destinations they must visit during the game, as well as sharing two “shared destination” cards with two other players, which are destinations that each pair must meet at during the game. Once a player visits their five destinations, they win. Players move around the board one step each turn, but sometimes they must wait several turns at a station for a train to arrive (indicated by the “colour clock”). While they are waiting at a station, they must roll to possibly draw an “event card”, which can initiate things like rail strikes, or provide a “taxi ticket” to get them from A to B, pronto. The game forces players to determine the optimal route between their destinations, re-route as events occur, and negotiate their routes to be compatible with the players that they must meet.

I may finish designing this game at some point, including proper playtesting, but I also feel like the basic mechanic is a little tedious and there are not enough “interesting decisions”. I may be better off just scrapping it and starting with something entirely new. Below the fold are the rules as they stand, and my working notes …

So, I’m doing Ian Schreibers online “Game Design Concepts” course. It’s been great so far, and I’m learning quite a lot. This is a post that I’ll keep updating throughout the Game Design Concepts course, just so I can keep track of my work easily. I may split it up into multiple posts or pages, if need be.

My work

(These assignments are completed in a set time, and are generally early prototypes in need of further playtesting and development to become decent games. Some are experiments that are unlikely to ever become decent games … while others may be developed further in the future)

Level 5 Challenge:TBC. Make a rule change to the dice game Bluff to eliminate the positive feedback loop (which comes about due to the information assymetry between winning player and losing players).

Level 6 Challenge:TBC

Some notes on some ‘art game’ playings:

Passage: Mechanic reminds me of Ico (Playstation2) – your movement is restricted by your NPC partner which must follow you (potentially a dead weight, although one you aparrently don’t mind, indicated by the little love heart upon meeting). Aesthetic/Surface, despite being ‘lowfi’, reminds me of the feel of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”, particularly the track Breathe. Damn you artists for making use think about inevitable things we can’t change and don’t want think about !

Level 8 Challenge: Create a concept for a game that is built to appeal specifically to griefers (ie player killers in MUD terms, campers or teamkillers in FPS terms).My notes are here. I never posted these to the official forum since it’s still a bit of a ramble and needs refinement – I couldn’t bear to subject the other course participants to actually wading through the text, but it’s posted here anyhow just in case you have precious time to kill (yeh right :) ).

Level 9 Challenge:Create an embedded backstory for the game “Pente“. What is the setting? What do the pieces represent? Why are you placing them? Attempt to make the backstory that fit the mechanics. TBC.